1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the field of interactive communication and specifically related to a system and method of gathering information from a mobile device in order to optimize the content and delivery of one or more messages for a message recipient.
2. Background Art
Many schools, businesses, government agencies, and other organizations find it valuable to foster quality communication with their constituencies. This process increasingly involves the delivery of highly customizable and individually tailored messages via multiple communication platforms including email and social networking applications. The use of mobile communication devices for disseminating information is also increasing. Information about the intended message recipient's mobile device can be helpful when creating customized messages and also in creating or choosing the channel of communication used to deliver the messages.
Many organizations have a preferred channel for communicating with their audience. The selection of the communication platform or medium may be based on, among other factors, the differences in speed, cost, flexibility, reliability, or convenience for the individual or organization. As technology progresses and the costs associated with messaging decreases, more individuals have and are using smartphones, tablets or other mobile communication devices for sending and receiving messages. Accordingly, mobile communication channels are becoming an increasingly important method for reaching out to people, and may be the primary form of receiving information for many individuals. For example, mobile applications or “apps” are becoming ubiquitous and many individuals will download the latest apps in order to enhance their mobile communication experience. In addition, mobile device apps are becoming more robust, easier to use, and less expensive to produce on an almost daily basis.
Given the rapid growth in functionality and adoption of mobile apps in the last few years, many organizations are now choosing to integrate mobile apps into their communication outreach programs. Further, many other organizations now prefer or would potentially prefer to use mobile apps to communicate with as many of their constituents as possible. For example, since communication by telephone and text messaging can be expensive, many schools try to limit the amount of text messages and telephone calls made by the school due to the high costs associated with the infrastructure and third party services needed. On the other hand, a mobile app with a push notification feature is generally a less expensive option for easily and reliably delivering personalized communications to parents, students, teachers, and administrators.
While mobile apps offer great promise for providing an enhanced communication experience, organizations deploying a mobile app still rely on their constituents adopting the mobile app in order for the organization to reap the intended benefits. Driving adoption of the app in significant numbers can be difficult to achieve for a number of reasons. First, the organization needs to inform the constituents about the availability of the mobile app and otherwise encourage or incentivize them to download and install it on their mobile device. However, notification regarding the availability of the app is not enough. Since mobile apps are only compatible with the specific hardware and operating systems the app was designed for, significant effort may be wasted because some constituents may not have a mobile device that is compatible with the app.
Accordingly, since most organizations will likely have constituents that use a wide variety of mobile devices and operating systems, not all of which will be compatible with a given mobile app, the organization and its constituents may be frustrated in their attempts to create and deploy apps that will have broad acceptance. While it can be difficult to for a company to know the compatibility of each constituent's mobile device with a given app, it would be useful to understand which mobile communication devices and operating systems are being used in order to enhance the probability that as many constituents as possible can effectively and efficiently use the mobile app. Further, if the constituents have not downloaded an available mobile app to their mobile communication device, it will generally impede the optimization of communication and likely increase communication costs for the organization. Accordingly, without improvements in the process of driving adoption of mobile apps, the dissemination or messages via mobile communication devices will continue to be suboptimal.